Rule 18 for history of philosophy: don't essentialize

Posted on 27 December 2015 ..

I have been reading a lot about Indian philosophy for the podcast recently and have been struck that, especially in older secondary literature, you'll come across claims like "an interest in the self is fundamental to the Indian worldview" or "non-violence is deeply rooted within the humanism of Indian culture." Such claims, made by both Indian and non-Indian scholars, are usually meant as compliments. But to my mind they are reductive and, to be frank, silly. In one case, which actually inspired me to devise this new rule, an author said that non-violence (ahimsa) was fundamental to the Indian worldview, so that the spectacular and tragic violence of mid-20th-century Indian history must have been somehow a violation or abberation of Indians' true nature! That looks suspiciously like a theory that is immune to counterevidence. One sees this with other cultures too. I've often seen - and not only in older literature - remarks that Islam is, or isn't, a "religion of peace," is "intolerant" or "tolerant," etc

The truth is that cultures, including religious cultures, are complex and marked by internal disagreement, and they develop over time. So we should see them as historical phenomena, not as having some sort of essential character that is acquired by all the adherents of a given religion or members of a given culture.

Probably it is easier to make this point about cultures or geographical regions than religions. It seems just evidently ridiculous to suppose that the population of India has, in general, had a commitment or even tendency to any particular philosophical view from the time of the Upanisads down to the current day. (Which, as I've mentioned, doesn't stop people from saying things to this effect.) Lurking below the surface here is our urge to stereotype - just as Italians are emotional and germans love discipline, so Indians are supposedly fascinated by the self and committed to non-violence.

With religion, things are trickier. I think I would have to admit that someone who is actually a Muslim might have a stake in what Islam "really is committed to" - e.g. on the basis that there are correct and incorrect interpretations of the Koran and hadith. But I see no reason for a non-Muslim, or even a Muslim historian of philosophiy who is writing in his or her capacity as a historian, to think in these terms. Rather the question should be, "what have actual Muslims in such-and-such a period believed about their religion?" Anyone who's dipped into the Islamic world episodes of the podcast knows that the answer to that is as varied as the thinkers that I covered, to say nothing of those I didn't.

This matters for the history of philosophy in particular because of the widespread tendency to expect that certain (especially "non-western") philosophical traditions will have a distinctive, essential character - more "spiritual", more "determinist," or whatever. This is a bad approach. We are much more likely to discover tensions and disagreements _within_ a tradition of any significant historical scope, than we are to discover some kind of enduring character that marks all thought from within that tradition. And supposing that frequently recurring ideas within a culture somehow derive from the "innate character" of that culture is lazy, and a way of avoiding the more interesting question: what historical or intellectual reasons underlie the prevalence of such ideas?

Stephen Mc Ateer on 28 December 2015

Well said. I think this is a

Well said. I think this is a widespread phenomenon and well represented in the popular media. I often call people out for "generalizing" about this or that culture, when "essentializing" would often be a more accurate term. Amending vocab now ...

Jaideep Prabhu on 28 December 2015

The ahimsa flavour is the

The ahimsa flavour is the veil of Mohandas Gandhi on Hinduism, I think. Even a brief perusal of Hindu ethics will clearly indicate a people not unaccustomed to war. The Gandhi fiction is allowed to continue probably because, in a nationalist imagination, a string of defeats is difficult to bear. Indian military history is a very understudied field but what little has been written shows a people not able to keep up with advances in the neighbourhood. This might be a simplistic view but we desperately need more scholarship on this to prove it one way or the other!

Peter Adamson on 28 December 2015

Obviously I'll leave the

Obviously I'll leave the military, as opposed to philosophical, history to more qualified people. (Not that I'm all that qualified when it comes to Indian philosophy either but I'm learning as fast as I can.) I think you are certainly right that Gandhi encouraged a focus on ahimsa in the earlier tradition - in fact some of the books I am looking at on ahimsa tackle the subject from buddha to Gandhi.

Kyle on 4 January 2016

Treating Buddhism as an

Treating Buddhism as an Indian religion, a more accurate claim could perhaps be "an interest in the self is fundamental to a suffering-inducing worldview" :-)

debjyoti on 29 March 2016

Totalitarian characterization

Totalitarian characterization of a whole civilization spreading over vast geographical area with many languages and religion and several milleniums of history is foolish indeed. But if we give up generalizing altogether intellectual enterprise will become impossible. And surely it is possible to generalize the characteristics of a particular group in a particular period. And i don't see why Buddha's and Mahavir's ethics cease to be "non-violent" because there was violence in 20th century India. Does the World War's make the Christ's ethics violent?

Peter Adamson on 30 March 2016

Well, if you're doing history

Well, if you're doing history of philosophy then I suspect you will rarely find a situation where it is helpful to "generalize the characteristics of a particular group in a particular period", unless the group is small enough to be something like a school or movement who are self-conscious of their own agreement with one another (like say the Stoics or Asharites). The mistake, I think, is to give in to ideas like "Muslims tend to be determinists" or "Indians despise the physical world" - of course not all generalizations are that wild and simplistic but even more fine-grained generalizations can be unhelpfully sweeping and cover over useful distinctions. For example "medieval thinkers elevated faith above reason" - probably many people would immediately agree to that statement, but it is at best an oversimplification and in fact subject to so many caveats that it is probably just false. Hence, I would at least say to err on the side of not generalizing but instead thinking about specific figures, texts and intellectual movements.

Samuel on 24 June 2016

"We are much more likely to

"We are much more likely to discover tensions and disagreements _within_ a tradition of any significant historical scope, than we are to discover some kind of enduring character that marks all thought from within that tradition."

I'm curious if you've read Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way, an admittedly introductory book, but if by chance you have, I would like to know what you think of Hamilton's assessment of 5th century democratic Athens as having an unprecedented conception of life and society which we now characterize as Western and whether it's appropriate or possible for an historian to characterize the zeitgeist of that (or any) time and place. Although she does contrast the outlooks of different Greeks--the wanderlust of Herodotus vs. Thucydides' cynical detatchment or Xenophon's Athens vs. Plato's Athens--she writes most earnestly that what defined all of Athens for a brief century or so was a balance stuck between the minds and spirits of men which enabled leisure, contemplation, and play to figure so prominently in their lives.

Peter Adamson on 24 June 2016

I have to admit I don't know

I have to admit I don't know the book though I've heard of it. I guess my instinct is to be skeptical - though it depends a bit on how the argument is framed. There could be a "Zeitgeist" or general trend/tendency in a society that admits of exceptions, after all. That is probably a more useful, maybe sometimes even necessary, kind of argument to make in history than in history of philosophy, though.

A child of Socrates on 24 March 2017

I find the "don't

I find the "don't essentialise" rule very interesting. I agree we shouldn't talk about cultures, philosophical traditions or peoples as having innate "essential" features that will never change, but I was less onboard with your rejection of summarising and generalising. After having thought about it some more, I'm leaning toward your position, but I'm not entirely persuaded, so I was hoping to hear your thoughts on a few things.

In The History of the World, a TV program here in the UK, Andrew Marr suggested that China's culture could be characterised by a committment to tradition following Confucius and European culture could be characterised by an attitude of question everything, following Socrates. That's despite Mao's Communist revolution, a complete overthrow of the traditional ways and the rise of Fascism in Europe, a complete rejection of the attitude of question everything. I guess for you, Marr's position is "just evidently ridiculous". I would like to think Marr isn't trying to make an objective statement of fact, but is more making a suggestion as to how it might be, that people can then talk about. If this kind of characterisation is framed as an invitation for discussion, is that more palatable?

There's a principle in many fields called "path dependence". This emphasises the importance of what you start with in the past, to quirky outcomes in the present. It's why we still use qwerty keyboards. Perhaps naively, it doesn't seem impossible to me that the ideas of these thinkers could continue to perpetuate themselves and shape the culture at a deep level. While I was typing this out I remembered the famous quote about everthing being "a footnote to Plato".

It's not clear how strong your position is on not summarising or generalising. Would you object to someone saying that French people speak French? It's not an innate feature of the French that they speak french, it could conceivably change, many French people will speak other languages and perhaps there are some who don't speak French at all. Would you say something like we shouldn't summarise or generalise about the French as a group? That we should only speak about individual French people and whether those individuals speak French or not?

In something more directly relevant to your field, would you be willing to talk about the ways that analytic and continental philosophy are distinctive? Or would you prefer to only talk about individual analytic and continental philosophers?

On the subject of stereotypes, they're sometimes based in truth. If they weren't, they would be equally valid if we reversed them. Saying that Germans are emotional or that Italians love discipline, to reverse your example, doesn't feel right to me. To deny all stereotypes is effectively to make a denial of culture. To say that all groups of people are the same. If they are not the same, then some of the stereotypes about, for example, black American culture, Amish American culture and Native American culture may be based in truth. The discipline of anthropology seems founded in exploring the differences between groups, which I imagine means anthropologists think these differences exist and that they're allowed to talk about them.

I understand the risk of oversimplifying in summarising and generalising. I also understand that it may seem like people are saying "every" Italian is emotional, or that any individual Chinese philosopher "can't" be opposed to tradition, or that Germans will "always" love discipline, but taken as a culture, any individual raised in that culture is more likely to be one way and not another. I think it's significant that you say that both Indian and non-Indian writers are summarising and generalising in the way you object to. That indicates it's not just a matter of outside cultural prejudice.

So, I agree that people shouldn't talk about cultures, philosophical traditions or peoples as having innate "essential" features that will never change, but I'm not entirely persuaded against summarising and generalising. It may be your rules are strictly for the history of philosophy, whereas my comments are more general. If you have the time, I'd appreciate it if you could say a little more. Thanks for writing something that made me pause to think.

Peter Adamson on 24 March 2017

Thanks for that interesting

Thanks for that interesting response! As I was reading it I was getting ready to make the answer you anticipate, namely that I am really talking about the use of generalizations and especially essentializing assumptions in the history of philosophy. They could be useful as shorthand but even something like "analytic" vs "continental" to use your example is deeply problematic in lots of ways, even if I plead guilty to using it in casual conversation with colleagues. (I usually put finger scare quotes around "continental" though since unlike the analytic philosophers, that name doesn't pick out an intellectual identity that many people would claim for themselves; and both words admit of many exceptions). Obviously there are indeed true sentences of the form "most people of Group G have property P", e.g. most French people speak French. But I think as soon as one start throwing around the idea that a given people - not a philosophical school, but a nation, people of a certain historical era, etc - just thought a certain way, one is usually being lazy and sloppy. Remarks like the one you mention from Marr are probably useful primarily because they inspire us to critique them by pointing out caveats and exceptions until they lie in tatters (I mean, to take China: what about Taoism?).

A child of Socrates on 27 March 2017

I wanted to retain the option

I wanted to retain the option to summarise and generalise, but when trying to think of examples where it was fair to do so, I struggled to come up with more than a few. Sometimes I'll get annoyed if the news talks about something like "the American outlook" on the Middle East. They may be able to talk about the outlook of the American government, but otherwise, America is too diverse, has too little homogeneity and just has too many people, it seems to me, to be able to talk meaningfully about "the American outlook". In your field, even something as simple as "Aristotle was a Greek philosopher" may be contentious. Calling him Greek may be anachronistic and he was much more than a philosopher, in terms of how we use that word today.

That said, I have one further point. That summarising and generalising can be done on a small scale or on a large scale. I listened to a podcast recently about Hannah Arendt and the guests wondered what to call her. A journalist? A social scientist? A philosopher? A cultural critic? Any name we give is a kind of summary and generalisation and likely a misleading one. You seemed to be making a similar point about labelling any particular thinker "continental". That's on a small scale. On a larger scale, if a historian were writing about say, the causes of WW1, I would expect them to tell the story, give the facts and evidence, assess the evidence, then to offer their own personal summary of what they think is the best way to understand the causes or cause of WW1. If they talk about the general causes of war, there'll be some generalisation in that too. As historical experts have read all the books, consulted the relevant sources and have been trained in their discipline, I'm sort of hoping they'll summarise all that into something more digestible, so that if I'm interested, I don't have to read all the books and to consult all the relevant sources. I can listen to a podcast and get the general idea ;) In thinking about this, I might have been confusing what I wanted to retain, by bundling together this smaller scale and larger scale summarising.

Would you see your podcasts as a kind of summarising on a larger scale? Or would you see them as something else? Thanks for the reply and for your time.

Peter Adamson on 29 March 2017

Well, I think we need to be

Well, I think we need to be careful here and distinguish between various things: essentializing, generalizing, and summarizing. I was only complaining about the first, which I would understand as assuming that there is some fundamental tendency in cultures, nations, etc to be committed to certain ideas ("Asians are communitarians") or have certain limitations ("the people of the Middle East don't understand democracy" or things like that). Generalizing is similar but doesn't presuppose any such essential, defining character: and it can be useful and legitimate especially if you are clear what you are doing ("generally Americans exercise less than Europeans") and you can look for causes of general facts ("...because they spend so much time in their cars"). Summarizing, by contrast, doesn't have to have anything to do with general phenomena, e.g. you can summarize a particular book or the thought of one philosopher which is usually what I am doing in the podcast.

A child of Socrates on 29 March 2017

I first came across rule 18

I first came across rule 18 on the page where you posted all 20 rules. It wasn't clear to me there, whether you were also against summarising and generalising, which wouldn't have seemed right to me. Looking at the comments here, it appeared you were. I probably got the wrong idea. Summarising was not a word you used and this quote was about the history of philosophy.

"The mistake, I think, is to give in to ideas like "Muslims tend to be determinists" or "Indians despise the physical world" - of course not all generalizations are that wild and simplistic but even more fine-grained generalizations can be unhelpfully sweeping and cover over useful distinctions."

As I mentioned in my first post, I agree we shouldn't talk about cultures, philosophical traditions or peoples as having innate "essential" features that will never change. Not much in nature is essential and will "never" change. Someone might say it's an essential feature of chimps that they don't post on philosophy blogs, but six millions years ago I would have been no different to a chimp and here I am today, a monkey at a typewriter.

I wasn't sure what to think about summarising and generalising though, so hoped to hear you say some more, to try and establish what I thought about it more widely than just for the history of philosophy. I've arrived at the view that most things at a shallow level are usually, to borrow your phrase, sloppy and lazy. As it touched on some of the things I'm interested in, it was enjoyable to think about.

Peter Adamson on 30 March 2017

I tend to agree but one also

I tend to agree but one also has to be practical: you can't get through life without summarizing and generalizing so the key is to be clear with yourself and others when you are doing it, and where there may be exceptions and imprecisions. Actually Aristotle thought science was exclusively a matter of grasping generalities, so it must have its place!

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